


someone has to take care of these flowers

by avosettas



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Swapfell (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Underswap (Undertale), Flashbacks, Gen, Grocery Shopping, Hypervigilance, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Regicide, Swapfell Sans (Undertale), Underswap Sans (Undertale), i think, see notes for more detailed warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26553394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avosettas/pseuds/avosettas
Summary: Two Sanses walk into a grocery store.It's not quite as comedic as it sounds.
Relationships: Sans & Sans (Undertale)
Kudos: 23





	someone has to take care of these flowers

**Author's Note:**

> detailed warnings: fear of being poisoned, hinted compulsive cleaning
> 
> hcs at the end!  
> EDIT 11/30/2020: names have been changed! some edits have also been made to reflect that thistle is partially blind
> 
> names:  
> echo - us sans  
> thistle - sf sans  
> zin - us pap  
> pyrite - sf pap  
> pollux - ht(sw) pap

His entire body feels like a rubber band that’s been pulled taut. If he moves, it will snap. 

It’s entirely too bright here, and there’s a low drone in his ears - if he focuses, it’s a mid-morning talk show, and - 

“THISTLE? HELLOOOOO?” And Echo is there, too. “ARE YOU ALRIGHT?”

“...FINE.” Thistle says, after a long pause. "ARE THERE USUALLY SO MANY PEOPLE?” 

Echo blinks. “UM… THIS IS AN OFF HOUR, ACTUALLY. USUALLY IT’S BUSIER, I THINK.” He seems to make a decision, and simply says, “LET’S GO, OUR LIST IS SHORT!” 

In theory, this was meant to… acclimate Thistle to the more peaceful world’s crowded stores. In practice, though, it was just making his magic bubble up unpleasantly, ready to respond to the threat it was perceiving in his hypervigilance. 

“SERIOUSLY, ARE YOU GOING TO BE OKAY?” Echo asks again, leading him through the aisles. It’s mostly older people, but Thistle stares warily at all of them, twisting his head to look for threats with his good eye. 

“I’M FINE, ECHO,” Thistle hisses. “I JUST WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE.” 

Echo rolls his eyes. “YOU’RE A TERRIBLE LIAR! BUT I’LL RESPECT THAT YOU DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.” 

Thank _fuck_. And Thistle knows he’s telling the truth; the one thing he seems to have in common with all of his doubles, aside from a younger brother, is that they all despise lying. Of course, none of them would eviscerate someone for a little white lie. 

“WE NEED… HM, MOST OF THIS IS FROZEN!” Echo says, reading down the list Thistle had handed him, so as to navigate the store easier, since Echo had been there before. 

“WE LIKE FROZEN FOOD,” Thistle says, not entirely truthful. They do; Pyrite had grown to love those awful Hot Pockets especially. 

But also, no one could poison _packaged_ food. (Well, they could, but it would be easier to notice.) 

“UGH, SO DOES ZIN,” Echo shakes his head. “IT’S DISGUSTING AND UNHEALTHY! YOU SHOULD HEAR WHAT POLLUX HAS TO SAY ABOUT SOME OF THE PROCESSED THINGS HERE…” 

“THEY TASTE GOOD,” Thistle argues.

“...THEY’RE STILL UNHEALTHY,” Echo grumbles, aware he’s lost the argument. “ANYWAY, LET’S GET THESE CLEANING SUPPLIES FIRST.” 

The shelves allow little ~~advantage over the enemy~~ use of his limited peripheral vision. Echo doesn’t seem to mind, or even pay attention - he keeps chattering. 

People don’t look where they’re going, human nor monster. 

Someone hits Thistle in his left hip, on their way out of the cereal aisle. He turns faster than he can think, _a deliberate attack on his blind side_ , already materializing bullets - 

There’s a child, still in stripes. What would his Queen think - 

The Queen is dead. That’s right. 

The bone disappears.

The child is a bunny monster with its mother. She’s from his universe; he’d seen her around Snowdin. So he gives her a curt nod, and she lifts her head back in recognition, and they move on their way. 

Echo is looking at him from a few aisles down. He stares straight into Thistle's face, like he can see through his eye sockets to his soul. 

“THISTLE, ARE YOU -” 

“IF YOU ASK IF I’M OKAY AGAIN,” Thistle spits. “I WILL BREAK EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR RIBS.” 

Echo doesn’t press, but he does pass the cart to Thistle to push. The handle is a nice weight in his hands, but it’s not quite grounding. 

Echo leads, pulling the corner of the cart as Thistle pushes. Thistle is hardly listening to his chatter at this point, just following him and watching everything. 

~~What would his Queen think…~~

( _”Do you really believe Her Majesty will stop wanting to destroy humanity because of_ one nice kid _, Sans?”_

 _”...NO…BUT SURELY…_ ” 

_You know I haven’t believed in this cause since I saw those bunnies dust right in front of me.” Alphys’s eyes are hard. “The Queen isn’t always_ right, _Sans.”_ )

“HERE ARE THE CLEANING SUPPLIES. YOU NEED PLEDGE, RIGHT?” 

( _”I must admit, I did not,” Toriel coughs. “I did not expect the Captain of my Guard and her best Lieutenant to be the ones to dust me.” Her eyes cut to Sans. They’re hard with malice. “I trusted you."_

 _”I -” Her body collapses into dust. Her soul follows, after a moment. The wind in the garden blows it straight into Sans’s legs._ ) 

Dust. Dust everywhere. 

He has so much LOVE. Monsters are made of love but all he’s ever had is - 

“THISTLE?” 

“WHAT?” He snaps, meaner than he’d like.

Echo blinks at him. His eye lights are bright, patience cyan. “YOU’RE - YOU’RE JUST, UM. BREATHING KIND OF HEAVY, AND I THOUGHT…” 

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME,” Thistle replies, taking a deep breath and then selecting three cans of cleaner from the shelf and depositing them into the cart. 

( _”YOUR MAJESTY?”_

 _”Ah, Sans. You may go,” She hadn’t looked up from the garden. Most of the flowers were in some state of decay._ It was the one thing Sans never, ever forgot. _”Someone must take care of these flowers.”_

_It was the closest thing to_ nice _he’d ever seen from the Queen. The Queen, who, since ~~she’d died~~ he’d killed her, had only ever given him nightmares of beratings and memories of having his skull rubbed into his comrades’ dust as punishment for his failings._) 

“IT’S JUST…” He sighs a bit. Echo looks at him worriedly from across the cart. “SOMEONE HAS TO TAKE CARE OF ALL THE DUST, DON’T THEY?”

**Author's Note:**

> \- thistle, due to his work in the royal guard, is extremely hypervigilant. he also cleans compulsively out of guilt/trauma, because dust is a trigger for him  
> \- sf toriel gardens, but she isn't good at it. as a parallel to asgore trying to bake in the original game  
> \- thistle and sf alphys killed sf toriel before the human (sf chara, in this case) reached her castle; they end up fighting ONLY sf asriel, with no preceding asgore style bit. both sf alphys and mal just wholeheartedly believed that while so many monsters changed because of sf chara, sf toriel would never  
> \- also i hc her to have been Awful to mal so like... they were probably right.  
> \- also, bc i mentioned it... i hc that asriel is the same in every au, bc he's such an important character. in swaps i switch frisk and chara but asriel always stays the same.


End file.
